Fire is catching inside

She’s right. “Thea” just doesn't feel right anymore. “LaLisa,” I say firmly.

Fire. All I see, all I feel, fire. Both inside and around me. 

I used to hear my parents say to my brother, “She’s got a dangerous spark in her. You gotta contain it,” But none of them can anymore. Not after what I just did. 

Now I lay on the ground, sobbing. 

I only wanted to help, I think. My parents are dead now. Because of me. I can’t go back now, then my thoughts go back to my brother, why did you leave?! I need you!! Maybe I do ruin everything. “Maybe you were right,” I whisper, my voice cracking with tears. He said to me, right before he left, that I hurt everything around me. 

I hear footsteps coming toward me, and I try to get up and start running, but my legs just won’t carry me.

It feels like the world’s blurring around me. My breaths are raggedy and shallow. Please, just let this be a nightmare. I feel the weight of exhaustion as I lay here, and I have nowhere else to go, so, eventually I just fall asleep.

When I open my eyes again, I’m in a room, full of scribbles and neon colored lights. It’s blurred, but I see a girl with blue hair. No one else is in here, only this girl.

Then I remember. One of my friends since we moved to the undercity. Powder. She and her older sister, Vi, both disappeared about three months ago. We moved to the undercity because of the war in the place I lived. A little place in California called Los Gatos. We were shocked when we first got to the undercity, because of all the rampant music, and neon lights, it took a while for us to get used to the place. That’s when I met Vi and Powder, both been here they’re whole lives.

I feel her hand on my forehead, “Hey,” she says, “Are you okay?” I can tell that I’ve been cleaned, but by who? Where am I even? 

“Powder? Where-” I cut myself off.

“This is my place now.” She pauses. “And also, it’s not Powder anymore. It’s Jinx.” I can tell by the look in her eyes that something happened with her and Vi. She hides it with the rest of her body, but I can see a flicker of anger and sadness in her eyes. Her mood quickly changes, and she says, “Hey! Silco lets you change your name! Wanna?”

She’s right. “Thea” just doesn't feel right anymore. “LaLisa.” I say firmly. Then I need to ask a question that’s been bothering me. “Jinx, why were you gone for three months?” 

She pauses again, but this time, when she speaks, it’s quieter. “Vi left. After I killed Mylo. Claggor. Vander.” 

Those four were her family. Guess the same thing happened. I look at her more closely, and see that she has more scars, and she’s growing out her hair, too. She used to have messy bangs and a single braid going down to her shoulderblades, now she has two braids, going down to her elbows. One side of her hair is over her face, but not like some emo girls do it—it’s more like it’s popping out and then going to the side. Still the same color, though. Her vibrant, electric blue hair. Her eyes, too. Same ocean eyes, but there’s something different about them. They’re more like a maniac’s. 

“Come on! I need to show you somewhere.” 

She leads me to a meadow, under a willow. There are beautiful black and silver birds, and I recognize them. 

“Mockingjays,” I say.

“What do they do?” Jinx asks.

“Watch this.” I whistle a four-note tune, and it repeats them exactly. Then I start singing an actual song,

You're headed for heaven

The sweet old hereafter

After that line, Jinx puts her head on my shoulder and starts singing with me. I introduced it to her a while ago.

And I've got one foot in the door

But before I can fly up

I've loose ends to tie up

Right here, in the old therebefore

I'll be along

When I've finished my song

When I've shut down the band

 played out my hand

paid all my debts

 have no regrets, right here

In the old therebefore

When nothing is left anymore

I'll catch you up

When I've emptied my cup

When I've worn out my friends

When I've burned out both ends

When I've cried all my tears

When I've conquered my fears

Right here, in the old therebefore

When nothing is left anymore

I'll bring the news

When I've danced off my shoes

When my body's closed down

When my boat's run aground

When I've tallied the score

And I'm flat on the floor

Right here, in the old therebefore

When nothing is left anymore

When I'm pure like a dove

When I've learned how to love

Right here, in the old therebefore

When nothing is left anymore

After the song, all the mockingjays started chirping the exact tune. 

“ 내가 바로 네가 두려워하는 그 핑크 베놈이야!” I say. 

“You know I don’t understand it when you speak in Korean. I told you that before.”

“Heh! Sorry. It means ‘I’m that pink venom they’re scared of,” I respond. 

“Also, what does ‘Lalisa’ mean?” She asks.

“It means, well, from what I was told at least, ‘one who is dangerous but is praised.’ Not exactly sure.” 

“Heh. Sounds like you.” She says, half-joking. “Uugghh, we gotta go back soon!!!” She thinks for a moment, and then says, “You know what? We should get tattoos.”

“No. Nonononono. No.” I say, hoping she’ll change her mind. (I’ve never been that good at arguments…😓)

“But don’t you wanna break more rules?” She says.

“Yes, but not by getting tattoos!!” I respond.

After Jinx convinced me to, after like an hour (it felt like centuries…), we walk back into Zaun, and find a tattoo parlor. Jinx gets blue clouds on the left side of her body, and I get one of a mockingjay in flight on my neck. 

“If we burn, you burn with us” I’ve always admired this line. But never as much as I do now. When I was a kid, I used to think that it just meant if there was a wildfire or something, then a lot of things would be burnt down. Now I know that it means the peace is broken, and if one side of the war burns, then they will too. Now fire is catching in me. Now no one can contain it. 

“Well,” Jinx’s voice startles me. “Glad I convinced you to get a tattoo?”

“Yeah, you won. At least, that argument. Chances are, I’ll win next time,” I say. 

“Cocky,” I hear Jinx mumble as we walk back together. She knows I’m bad at arguing. We start walking back to the undercity-well, Zaun now, because she said that was where her new dad lived. 

“Remember when Ekko crashed out because you beat him in a game?” I ask. Jinx busts out laughing, and I do too. 

She leads me to a place called The Last Drop. Said that was where Silco worked. 

“Jinx, where were you?” a man with one glowing red eye said. 

“Silco, can’t I walk around Zaun every once in a while?”

“And you brought her.” I know he means me. “Jinx told me about you. It’s Thea, right?” 

His voice is cold and intimidating, so it’s hard for me to speak. “Uh…” I'm at a loss for words. “Actually, I changed to Lalisa. It’s either Korean or Thai. I don’t know.” 

His eyes scanned me over. “Do you” he pauses. “already know how to fight?” he says, the pauses in his sentences make him seem manipulative. 

“Yes, I-somewhat, I kind of know how to box. Just a little bit though,” I respond.

“I will have Sevika train you both.” he says. “I’ll talk to you two later.”

As we walk back to Jinx’s hideout, I ask, “who’s Sevika?” 

“Annoying. She’s Silco’s ‘number one’. Or as I like to call her, ‘regular johnny-on-the-spot’” 

“She the one who lost the arm?” 

“Yep. and somehow she kept her annoyingness.” Jinx retorts. I chuckle. 

By the time we get back to her hideout, it’s night. Neither of us are tired, so we stay up all night talking. 

“I’ve been wondering, why do you have a doll of Mylo? Didn’t you hate him?” I ask.

“So I can shoot him. Even though he’s dead, he still gets on my last nerves!”

“Hallucinations? I get em’ too.” I respond. “How can people be dead, and still be annoying?” 

“Blah blah blah, physics that doesn't exist, blah blah blah, boring science stuff, and yeah, that’s how.” We both laugh, which feels good after what happened to both of us. 

Then Jinx changes her mood, her brow both furrowed and at the same time, like Powder, too. and she asks, “do you think… that Vi and your brother’ll come back?”

“I don’t know.” I pause to think for a second, and then say, “I know one thing though. I want to make sure that this city’ll respect me. I wanna make them scared.”

TWO YEARS LATER

I’m wanted in piltover now. Guess it worked. They’re scared of me and Jinx now. My brother’s still not back. I guess that’s fine. I changed a lot, and I won’t be the girl he knew anymore. Lalisa is who I became.

I walk in the ruins of one of the many explosions I caused, the silence making me wonder if I could turn back, would I? I hear footsteps, and, out of instinct, I pull out my gun and aim it at her. 

“Thea..?” she says. ‘She’ is one of my old friends, Tris. “I-is it true? You…you work for Silco? Please, please, please tell me it’s not true.”

“I do. I do work for him. Me and Jinx are like his daughters,” I say, lowering my gun just a bit as she steps in front of me. 

“But.. you’re not the girl all over the wanted posters, right?”

“I am. Changed basically everything about me, might add.”

“No, y-you don’t know what you're saying. He’s using you, Thea-”

“Stop calling me that! You don’t get to anymore! I’m Lalisa now!” I yell. Then, she does something I don’t expect. She punches me on the face. Hard. Just hard enough to knock me off my feet. She pins me down on the ground, holding my arms with her feet. 

“You killed so many!! How could you?!” she yells. She punches me, again and again, and I taste blood. 

“No,” I whisper. I guess I showed a glimpse of Thea, because she stops punching me. A voice in my head says, do it. I secretly pull out one of my bombs, and pull the pin. For a second, there’s an intense ringing.

Then, 

The world, 

Goes,

Black. 

Works Cited

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: The Old Therebefore